The Greatest of the Forgotten Conservative Thinkers

“A polity of such geopolitical importance would surely be expected to have birthed an intellectual reaction to the French Revolution that was comparable to its formidable military response.”

Historians tend to converge on the premise that conservatism originated in the aftermath of the French Revolution and was envisaged as a response to the destructive socio-political forces that the Revolution had unleashed. Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre were among those whose renowned commentaries on the events in France epitomize this phenomenon. The former formulated a crucial distinction between sweeping change and gradual improvement, and this would define the British conservative movement going forward. Meanwhile, Maistre theorized that revolutions constitute divine punishments and even went so far as to champion an alternative, reactionary vision of society, which resembled Europe before the Reformation and in which political power was reconnected with religious authority. For Maistre, religion was indispensable to nationhood, and the greatest peril lay in divorcing the Church from the state and, in turn, giving secular government the power to redefine and disseminate its understanding of morality.

Although Burke and Maistre profoundly influenced conservatism in Britain and France and deserve to be studied, mainstream scholarship unjustly overlooks the emergence of conservative thinking in another prominent European power of the time: Russia. In many respects, contemporary political developments revolved around Russia almost as much as they did around Britain. Catherine the Great’s long reign from 1762 until 1796 earned her country widespread recognition for curtailing Ottoman influence in the Balkans and Crimea, defeating Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and mediating in the War of the Bavarian Succession and the American War for Independence. Her grandson Alexander I was equally influential in helping bring down Napoleon and forging the Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia, and Austria to police Europe against liberal-nationalist revolutionaries. A polity of such geopolitical importance would surely be expected to have birthed an intellectual reaction to the French Revolution that was comparable to its formidable military response.

As such, historians and political philosophy aficionados alike should turn to Nikolay Karamzin, who lived from 1766 to 1826. Karamzin was no imitator of the political discussions happening in Britain and France; he was an original thinker who offered many important ideas of his own. He combined a profound commitment to republicanism with loyalty to the Romanov monarchy, believing—like Montesquieu—that different societies beckoned different forms of government. Also, he believed that Russia needed not a virtuous republic but, rather, an autocratic state characterized by relations of duty and honor. By grounding his arguments in history to explain, for instance, why the democratic Novgorod Republic was conquered by the authoritarian Duchy of Muscovy in 1478, he pioneered the historical novel genre and emphasized the need to examine national history to understand how nations develop and behave.

He also encouraged individuals to accept the world’s imperfections rather than challenging them through revolution. He posited that nurturing this acceptance was integral to preserving human deficiencies, inequalities, and peculiarities, against which we persevere and on which our social fabric hinges. In turn, their preservation, he argued, was required to sustain and consolidate what he considered “national fraternity,” a combination of social cohesion and understanding of the past and future purposes of the collective.